1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a sensor device having a number of sensor elements by which measurements can be made, and having a read-out unit for reading out the measurements from the sensor elements. In addition, the invention relates to a method for reading sensor elements.
2. Description of the Related Art
Sensor arrangements having a number of sensor elements are known from electronic cameras for example. In this case an image is projected onto a CCD (charge coupled device) via a lens system. The image is recorded by the CCD based on a measurement.
Owing to the large number of sensor elements on a CCD, the image recorded in this way requires a very large amount of memory and also a very large amount of transmission capacity when transferring the image from the camera for further processing.
Hence it is known in the art to apply a compression technique to the image. Wavelet transformations with subsequent compression have become established in particular for this purpose, because they lead to a very high compression rate and a large part of the image content can still be reconstructed even when only part of the data has been transferred.
The wavelet transformations do not make the memory in the camera obsolete, however, because the image still needs to be stored temporarily prior to the transformation. Furthermore, an additional processor unit is required in order to perform the transformation. This makes the camera more expensive and increases its power consumption.
Hence an object of the invention is to record images in such a way that an easily compressible representation of the image content is obtained back at the recording stage and an additional processor unit is not required.